[SOLVED] The reason for constant disk activity?

[0Artur0]

Hi!

This is driving me nuts. I noticed that my C: drive (SSD) is making a lot of noise like it's writing or reading something almost all the time. The pattern of the noise is something like morse code and the disk is never quiet for more than 5 seconds.

With Process Explorer I noticed that the only process active all the time is DWM.exe. It doesn't consume a lot of CPU or memory but it's active non-stop. I don't know, maybe that's normal behavior for this process. I googled it but the only issue with this process people are having is that for them it uses 100% CPU, which is not the case here. I uninstalled Chrome, antivirus (ESET NOD32) and installed a different version of graphics drivers (NVIDIA 2080Ti). It didn't help at all. Here's how the Resource monitor looks after 10 minutes of idling: Resource monitor screenshot (the Chrome stuff is gone if I close it, so it's not that). You can see the disk activity on the right. Also, it's not network related because it happens even when there's no network activity. I also ran a troubleshooter but of course, it didn't find any problems.

I seriously need help identifying the issue. What else can I do, where else can I look for clues?

 

[Diddly]

SSDs don't make any noise. Only mechanical drives will make noise. I suggest you check what device you actually have installed? If you have a HDD switch to an SSD!!


As an aside, if it's making a regular tick noise it could be about to fail. Run CrystalDiskInfo on your drive(s) to check for any issues.

good luck!

 

[0Artur0]

SSDs don't make any noise. Only mechanical drives will make noise. I suggest you check what device you actually have installed? If you have a HDD switch to an SSD!!
As an aside, if it's making a regular tick noise it could be about to fail. Run CrystalDiskInfo on your drive(s) to check for any issues.

OMG, you're right... damn rabbit-hole... I missed the obvious fact that SSDs don't make noise! I just assumed that it was C: because of all the process activity.
So, it appears the noise is coming from one of the mechanical disks (I have two). I installed CrystalDisk, this is what I see: CrystalDiskInfo. What am I looking for here? I scanned the disks with Windows tool but it didn't find any errors. Also, there are just regular files (documents, videos, etc) on those disks.